CHAPTER I

AS THE PROPHET OF JOY

THE poet, working for Humanity and accredited for ever by the Book of Job as one of God's commissioners on earth, seeks knowledge of his Master, not only in the mystery of suffering, but in the mystery of joy.

"We may safely say," avers Matthew Arnold (quoting St. Augustine, Pascal, Barrow, and Butler), "that joy and happiness are the magnets round which human life irresistibly moves."

"1

This is no philosophical postulate intended to bear the superincumbent weight of a vast system of ethics; it is a simple truth. To whom does it not apply? False ideas of joy there are in plenty; but happi

1 God and the Bible, pp. 93-94•

ness, either here or hereafter, who does not seek? What encourages any human being to go on living-even the veriest wretch who has a crust of bread to-day and knows not if he will have another to-morrow-except the chance of some moments of joy? Or what is the cause of suicide, except the insupportable conviction that such moments are over for ever?

And yet with all the expectation, how little joy there is!

I wander through each chartered street,

Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

A mark in every face I meet,

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.1

How seldom

Is not this perfectly true? do we meet a really joyous person, and how often does intimacy reveal secret springs of sorrow in those who appear gay! One may meet a man or woman merry with this or that special excitement; but a man or woman that possesses the spirit of joy, who ever found?

1 Selections from Blake, p. 91.

Of course religious persons answer that the world is too sad; that they strive against sin and misery; that they copy their Master, the Man of Sorrows; imitating even in that respect the Christ who came to gladden the world.

True, the world is sad; but how is it that they have not yet redeemed it from its sadness? What teaching is theirs, or what power is theirs, or what divine. influence is theirs, that they cannot yet impress the world with a sense of their own supreme insight into glory? Can they believe that Jesus taught, suffered, and died in order to make the world sadder? Yet is not modern life as sad as the life of the ancient Romans or Greeks?

I do not write in the spirit of scorn or scoffing, but I ask questions in the spirit of Job. Why should I, more than he, speak unrighteously for God and talk deceitfully for him? Why should I respect his person or contend for him? As one that deceiveth a man, will I deceive him? He would surely reprove me, if I secretly respect

persons. Shall not his excellency make me afraid and his dread fall upon me?

I say that Christianity is not a cause of joy in the world. It may be (accompanied generally with temporal benefits) a cause of consolation to the aged and the sick; but to the young and healthy it is more often the cause of depression and morbid introspection. I say that it has failed to touch the secret sources of sorrow from which the world at large suffers.

"Primitively it was glad and artistic. The angel of righteousness, says the Shepherd of Hermas, the most characteristic religious book of that age-its Pilgrim's Progress - the angel of righteousness is modest and delicate and sweet and quiet. Take from thyself grief, for (as Hamlet will one day discover) 'tis the sister of doubt and ill-temper. Grief is more evil than any other spirit of evil, and is more dreadful to the servants of God, and beyond all spirits destroyeth man. For as when good news is come to one in grief straightway he forgetteth his former grief, and no longer attendeth to anything except

the good news which he hath heard, so do ye also! having received a renewal of your soul through the beholding of these good things. Put on therefore gladness, that hath always favour before God and is acceptable unto him, and delight thyself in it, for every man that is glad doeth the things that are good, and thinketh good thoughts, despising grief." And surely, if we consider what are the pretensions of the Christian religion, one might suppose that its votaries would be singing in the exuberance of their mirth the whole day long. God manifested, the world redeemed, life and immortality brought to light, constant communion with the Spirit of Comfort, and a sure and certain hope of unending bliss after death! What language, what music, can adequately give expression to the ecstasy of the people who believe these things?

Yet the controversy between the Owl and the Nightingale remains as applicable to our own day as it was to the time of Edward I, 1 Marius the Epicurean, by Walter Pater, vol. 11, pp. 125-126.